How to Select the Right Cork for Your Wine
Now that you’ve made that special wine, you are going to want to bottle it and store in your wine cellar. And during that process, you will need to cork your wine as well.
How do you choose which cork to use?
Let us help you with that decision. Here are the four types of corks we offer and some details about each one:
- Natural
- Colmated
- Micro Agglomerated
- Agglomerated
Natural Corks
Natural corks are one piece and they come in grades (based on surface, water content, porosity, and visual inspection) and typically the best choice in most cases.
Aging: This cork, due to its spongy flexibility, is the one to use for aging wine beyond five years because it keeps its seal viable the longest.
Colmated Corks
Take cork from a natural cork stopper and fill its pores with glue and cork dust and you have a colmated cork.
Aging: This cork is good for medium aging, looks smoother and glides out of the bottle when you pull them.
Micro Agglomerated Corks
Micro-agglomerated corks are made and treated with granules using a steam-based process to remove TCA and other potential contaminants. This is considered a technical cork because of the process that has been used to make these corks, but it still keeps up the popular appeal of a traditional natural cork.
Aging: This cork is suitable for wine with some complexity but usually for wine with an estimated time to consume being about two years after bottling.
Agglomerated Corks
This cork is cheaper, pretty dense and made with cork dust and glue.
Aging: This cork is good for low bottling time wines so usually not used for wines that age for more than a year.
We hope this information helps you to choose the right cork for your wine. If you have any questions about our corks or which one you should choose for your particular wine or wines, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us for our advice. We are here to help you. Email sales@juicegrape.com or call 877-812-1137
Source 1
Written by Michelle Griffis aka the Nutmeg Nose from MWG
The Winemaker’s Think Tank: Vol 19 – Should I rinse my corks?
What’s the Winemaker’s Think Tank?
Every Thursday we will post about a few frequently asked questions that our winemaker has answered. If you have a winemaking question you would like to have answered, please email us at support@juicegrape.com and we will try to get into next week’s post. Cheers! 🙂
Should I rinse my corks?
Today, most manufactured corks are made in a sanitized environment and then packaged in vacuum sealed bags to ensure cleanliness. There is no need to boil, soak, or rinse the corks before use.
We hope this information helps with your winemaking. If you have any follow up questions or winemaking questions in general, please email us at support@juicegrape.com.
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